Customer Reviews

Brought to Light: Shadowplay : the Secret Team/Flashpoint : the La Penca Bombing (Two Books in One)

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This book will really blow you away if you are unaware of American intelligence involvement in the various dirty wars of the past fifty years. If X-files-style paranoia appeals to you, this is really something to get your teeth into. While "The X-Files" suggests that US intelligence agencies have spent much of their time trying to cover up the existence of aliens, this book can produce evidence of much more frightening activities.

This is two books in one: Alan Moore's half provides the history of US imperialism in an incredibly readable and yet deeply unsettling graphic story. The other half of the book is a documentary-style account of yet another US-sponsored assassination, and yet another suppressed investigation.

I urge all Americans to read this book and reflect on whether you are comfortable with your tax money being spent on the murderous activities described.

Considering that Brought To Light was published in 1988, and the book seems to imply that the lid would be blown off of these scandals, it's ironic to read it now and see that not only did nothing come of the expose, but no one even seems to remember (or care) about La Penca.

Brought To Light is designed as a flipbook, with each side having a complete story, and it's own cover. The stories can be read in any order, as they only really converge at the end.

I read Flashpoint: The La Penca Bombing first, and it's the best of the two. Joyce Brabner and Tom Yeates tell the story of a couple of American journalists trying to expose American involvement with the attempted assassination of a Guerilla leader in Central America. It's a gripping story, but with almost 15 years elapsing since it's original publication, I can't help but wonder what the REAL story is, and if anyone was ever brought to justice. Another reviewer here states that the whole story was later recanted....

Shadowplay: The Secret Team, is a whole other ball of wax. Both stories are based on a lawsuit filed against the Federal Government by The Christic Institute, in which they hoped to expose 30 years of illegal and unconstitutional U.S. covert activities. Where Flashpoint tells a straightforward docudrama tale, Shadowplay is like Oliver Stone on a bad acid trip. Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz' hallucinatory tale is a conspiracy-nut's wet dream, but the art is almost as hard to follow as the twisting logic of the narrative, and the lettering is so hard to read, I was sorely tempted to just stop reading the book entirely, something I NEVER do....Usually I LOVE Alan Moore, but this story was just too much.

Overall, Brought To Light is an interesting read. If you already distrust "The Man", it won't tell you anything you didn't already suspect. And if you buy everything Uncle Sam tells you, you won't buy what the writers are selling.
It's an interesting look back at a time when it seems America was more naive and trusting in the Government, but that's about it.

Read Susie Morgan's book "In Search of The Assassin" in conjunction with this book. Susie was a survivor of La Penca and has doubts about the conclusions that this book comes to. Nobody wanted to talk about the bombing, and it is known that people lied to interviewers to cover up the facts.
Read with a pinch a salt.

Important background! In late 1993, Martha Honey & Tony Avirgan recanted their previous claims that the CIA tried to [end] Pastora after determining that Sandinista intelligence was behind the assasination attempt. Doug Vaughan published an expose on this in the San Francisco Chronicle/Miami Herald on August 1st, 1993.